Knowledge Base

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where a single physical server hosts multiple sites. Many users utilize the resources on a single server, which keeps the costs low. Users each get a section of a server in which they can host their website files.

DO YOU ALLOW ANONYMOUS FTP?No, We do not allow anonymous FTP.

I’VE UPLOADED DATA TO MY SERVER BUT I CANT SEE IT?

If you’ve uploaded the contents to your server but can’t see them, make sure you’ve refreshed the folder within your ftp client, to make sure it’s displaying the newest information for the folder you’re viewing. If you are still running into issues, please do not hesitate to contact us.

HOW DO I CONFIGURE MY FTP CLIENT?To set up your FTP client to work with your server:

1. Set your FTP client to connect to the host we provided to you. 2. Select SFTP as the connection protocol. 2. Enter the username for your server. 3. Enter the password for your server.

NOTE: You don’t need to enter a remote directory. Your user name and password will automatically bring you to your root directory.

WHAT IS FTP?FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is a standard method of transferring files over the Internet from one computer to another. FTP is a convenient, easy way to build your web site: You can use FTP to upload files (images or HTML files, for example) directly from your computer to your server.

IS THERE ANOTHER WAY TO USE FTP WITHOUT A SPECIAL UTILITY?Yes. If you’re using Windows, you can use Internet Explorer as your FTP Client:

Open your Internet Explorer Browser. At Address Bar, enter ftp://ftp.yourserver.com You will get a pop up prompt asking for your FTP user name and password. Enter your FTP user name and password. You will see all your folders and files listed there upon successfully logon to your FTP account. To upload content from your local drive, just copy from your local and paste inside the FTP Explorer. To delete content, select the file or folder inside your FTP Explorer, right click and delete. To exit your FTP account, simply close the Internet Explorer.

HOW DO I ENCRYPT A FREE SSL CERTIFICATELet’s Encrypt is a free Certificate Authority sponsored by the Internet Security Research Group. Let’s Encrypt provides automated certificates, but they only issue DV certificates.Let’s Encrypt Disadvantages

All Let’s Encrypt certificates are only valid for 3 months You can set up your server to automatically renew the certificate before it expires so you don’t have to deal with manually renewing, verifying and installing the certificate, but this process is not always easy to setup, and may be quite time-consuming

No OV or EV certificates are issued; If you need OV or EV certificates, Let’s Encrypt is not your choice.

No Wildcard certificates are issued. If you need wildcard certificates, Let’s Encrypt is not the answer

Not a big money saving Regular “paid” DV Certificates, issued by a trusted Certificate Authority, are very cheap (few bucks a year); so, there’s a very little money saving going on Let’s Encrypt

RECOMMENDED DNS TTL VALUES

When specifying TTL (Time To Live) values in DNS records, please be aware of the following important factors:

The higher the TTL, the less frequently caching name servers need to query authoritative name servers. A higher TTL reduces the perceived latency of a site and decreases the dependency on the authoritative name servers. Beside this, a higher TTL makes harder a TTL Poisoning attack, so higher TTL is more secure too.

The lower the TTL, the more frequently updates are propagated to other name servers. A slower TTL can make significantly slower your site.

As standard, we recommend a TTL of 86,400 (24 hours), and not lower than 3,600 (1 hour). If you are planning to make DNS changes, we recommend lowering the TTL at least 36 hours before making the changes. So you should lower the TTL to 300 (5 minutes) at least 36 hours in advance of making the changes. After the changes are made, increase the TTL back to 24 hours. Minimum admitted TTL value is 300 (5 minutes).

WHAT IS DNS AND WHAT ARE A, MX AND CNAME RECORDS?Distributed Name System (DNS) is an Internet protocol that connects text based domain names to their numeric IP addresses. i.e. DNS translates www.domain.com to an IP address.

Name Server: Listens for and answers requests for DNS information. Each ISP and Hosting Company has their own set of Name Servers. When you register or transfer a domain, you specify which provider’s Name Servers are authoritive for a domain. When someone tries to email you or visit your website, their ISP’s servers query the authoritive Name Servers to find out which IP addresses to use.

Resource Records An entry in the DNS that defines an Internet resource.

“A” Records: An “Address” record maps a name to an IP address. e.g. www.domain.com IN A 192.168.1.1 mail.domain.com IN A 192.168.1.2

“CNAME” Records “Canonical Name” records allow you to set aliases for existing address records e.g. pop.domain.com IN CNAME mail.domain.com. pop3 IN CNAME mail mail IN A 192.168.1.2 In the case above pop.domain.com and pop3.domain.com point to the same location. The pop3 line shows an abbreviated way of defining the record.

“MX” Records: “Mail eXchanger” records specify which servers are to be used for email delivery. Multiple mail servers can be specified with different preferences. This creates fault tolerance in the event a mail server is unreachable. The server with the lowest preference value is the first server that other mail servers attempt to contact. If that server is not available, external mail servers progress down the list to the server with the next lowest preference value. e.g. smtp IN MX 5 mail smtp2 IN MX mailbackup.isp.com. mail IN A 192.168.1.2

A * prefix can be used as short-hand for all prefixes. e.g. * IN A 192.168.1.1 This maps www.domain.com ftp.domain.com etc. to 192.168.1.1 A @ prefix can be used as short-hand for a blank prefix. e.g. @ IN A 192.168.1.1 This maps domain.com to 192.168.1.1

WHAT IS DNS PROPAGATION?

Every time you make a change to the DNS servers of your domain, or you modify any DNS record, you have to wait for the propagation of this data to be effective.Propagation is the time it takes for each of the internet backbones to be updated with your new DNS information.This often takes about 24 hours, but can take even longer, sometimes up to 5 days.It’s not linear: these data travel from one DNS server to another, and is influenced by the policy of every single server. So it may happen that a user see new DNS data in few minutes, while another user (with different connectivity and DNS server) take many hours.You can check the propagation of your DNS worldwide using this free service: www.whatsmydns.net